Misfortune befalls them; they seem overwhelmed. From disorganization they
pass to grumbling and from grumbling to revolution. Come back to look at
them to-morrow; you will find them valiant, dashing, light-hearted heroes
recking no longer of yesterday. They laugh at their sufferings. They
sing. They defy their gollywogs of gaolers. They combine to think out
some new plan. They engage in some fresh piece of work. Merely to look at
them renews the savour of life.
At first everything went amiss here. Apart from eating our starvation
rations, we had nothing to do. It was a terrible time. But contemplate
them now; they are blithe enough. They are prisoners, and yet you would
say they were in their own homes, masters, owners. Prisoners? They seem
to be the guardians of their sentries; they go so far as to chide the
sentries if these are slovenly in the performance of their duties. It is
not that the prisoners have adapted themselves to the environment, but
that they have forced the environment, willy nilly, to adapt itself to
them. Like certain mosses which grow where there is no humus, they catch
flying grains of dust and force these to yield the scanty soil which will
enable them to live.
Moreover, events seem to favour this natural propensity to hope.
* * * * *
The last thing was your card with a picture of the _Victory of
Samothrace_. You had erased the title and put a date in its place. Every
one came to see this bulletin of victory which I had put up beside your
portrait! I wish you could have heard the comments.
“Then we shall not have suffered for nothing,” said a lad from Montmédy.
“I was two days in the forest with five comrades. We made holes in
the trees to suck the sap. We had hallucinations. Two of them killed
themselves.” Louis Ludes, a baker from Pouzolles, wounded in Morocco, and
wounded again at Lunéville, the worst of wounds, a shell in the abdomen
(his recovery astonished all the surgeons), exclaimed: “I too, tonnerre,
I am in this victory!”
And while they were looking at the beautiful Greek with the mighty wings,
Dutrex, who was reading the _Burgraves_, declaimed to us in his grating
bass voice, full of cruel irony, the mendicant’s apostrophe:
Les Vandales ont pris Berlin! Ah! quel tableau!
Les païens à Dantzig! Les Mogols à Breslau!
Tout cela dans l’esprit en même temps me monte
Pêle-mêle, au hasard; mais c’est horrible!… ô honte!…
Allemagne, Allemagne, Allemagne.… Hélas![29]
DAWN
_December 8, 1914._
Half awake, I stretch out my hand to see whether Dutrex is there. His
palliasse is deserted, his rug folded up. I raise myself on my elbow.
All the others are still asleep, lying like long mute mummies. I draw on
my shoes. At the main entrance, the sentries, hands in pockets, heads
between their shoulders, are stamping their feet, their eyes white with
cold. “_Guten Morgen!_”—“_Guten Morgen!_” I grope my way down the stair
and along the passage. The lamps have gone out. There is a light in No.
22. I go in. Dutrex is shaving; his little mirror is perched on the vice.
In front of him stands a smoky lamp. All around is darkness. Bouquet
passes from one cauldron to another, singing softly and sentimentally:
La petite Française
Qui m’attend là-bas
A les yeux de braise
Le cœur de lilas.…[30]
The kitchen is full of sulphurous fumes. “What time is it?”—“Five
o’clock.” Dutrex has finished shaving. I take his place before the mirror
and the lamp with the broken chimney. Some one knocks at the door. A
little man comes in. He wears a fatigue-cap; his head is bowed, his face
is tied up in a handkerchief, he holds his left cheek with both hands. He
looks at us like a whipped dog. “I’m in such pain!”—“What’s the matter?”
asks Bouquet, who is tender-hearted. The poor fellow is unable to speak
plainly. “I have been walking up and down the corridors for a long time.
I can’t keep still. My wound is gnawing at me. It seems to be screaming
there, just under the ear!”—“Poor chap, you must see Laloux, but he is
still asleep. Sit down there between the stoves. There’s a stool for you.
Drink a mug of coffee while you’re waiting. That’ll warm you.”—“Yes, I’m
perished with cold.”
Instead of a cheek he has a great violet crevasse with lines of scar
tissue radiating from it. He was struck by a bullet which passed in
obliquely through the nose and on its way out shattered half the left
side of the face, including the articulation of the jaw. He has an
abscess forming in the internal ear, which is pretty sure to kill him.
While I shave, I look at this reservist.
He arrived with the last batch of convalescent wounded. Most of them
were but half cured. They were sent away from Ingolstadt to make room
for refugees from Pomerania, children, women, and old men, broken down
through privation. The Russian wave is washing these refugees by
thousands into the southern hutments.
“Does it still hurt?”
“Not quite so much.”
“Where are you from?”
“From a village near Mans.”
“Do you think that your missus will be able to love you with that hole in
your cheek and your hanging jaw?”
“I hope so.”
“Where were you in barracks?”
“At Saint-Mihiel.”
“Where did you get your wound?”
“At Marville, near Virton, in Belgium.”
“Long ago?”
“August 24th.”
“Here’s another mug of coffee for you.”
The man, Vouvard by name, puts his hand behind the ear, closes his eyes,
and rocks to and fro, saying: “I don’t know what to do, it hurts so.”
The cooks come in. With great hooks they take down the boiling cauldrons.
Dutrex goes out for the roll-call. Steam fills the casemate, stifling
us, and I open the window. Day is breaking; tiny clouds of a pale silver
tint are floating at a great altitude. Deschênes, the woodman from the
forest of Argonne, catching sight of the white frost on the slope, says
with conviction: “This sort of weather gives one the hump here. Think how
jolly it would be to be at work. Think how there are people perishing of
hunger while we are shut up here doing nothing. And when we get home we
shall have to work ourselves to death to pay off the debts our wives have
made while we have been away. A lot of good one gets out of war!”
Dutrex enters with a martial stride. “I say, Riou, here are the latest
orders from headquarters: ‘The purveyors and the workmen employed at the
fort must be accompanied by a soldier of the guard; the prisoners are
forbidden to approach them. The sale of food and drink to prisoners is
strictly forbidden. The commandants are responsible for seeing that these
orders are carried out.’”
“Very well, the slopes are also forbidden. I will immediately go for a
walk there.”
I linger on the ramparts. The sun is about to rise. The air is pure,
like that of the high mountains. Beyond the huge Danubian plain I catch
sight for the first time of the blue serrations of the Tyrolese Alps,
crowning the delicate lines of the middle distance. To-day is the feast
of the Immaculate Conception. The air is filled with the sound of bells.
The deep notes of those of Ingolstadt mingle with the brighter chimes of
Hepperg, Wegstetten, and Lenting. The cocks are crowing. The crows are
flying at a great height, and the harmonious silence is broken from time
to time by their croakings. Everything glistens. The sky is superb. The
earth rejoices. The soul finds refreshment and delight in the elysian
dawn.
Over there, towards the rising sun, upon the Warthe and in the Carpathian
defiles, men are killing one another. In the opposite quarter, beyond
the gentle undulations dotted with white farms and beyond the magnificent
barrier of the Swabian Jura, men are killing one another in Alsace,
in Lorraine, and in Flanders. The villages of Europe are filled with
truncated limbs, wooden legs, broken lives. Poor world of men!
HE GOES AWAY
_December 13, 1914._
He leaves this evening. Every one is sad. Who will replace him? If
only it is not a man belonging to the school of the _Münchener Neueste
Nachrichten_,[31] which has been summoning the government to take
reprisals against the French prisoners. “_Geduld genug!_” exclaimed the
official journalist; “We have been patient long enough!” He demanded
the head of Colonel Grey, Sir Edward Grey’s brother, and also that of
Delcassé’s son, both of whom had been wounded and taken prisoner. The
_Ingolstädter Zeitung_ has been even more drastic than the Munich journal.
Yesterday passed gloomily. The men of the guard, like all those who
have not been at the front, were spiteful and meddlesome. The patrol
refused to allow us to set foot upon the slopes, even insisting that we
must remain in the mud and puddles of the lower courts. Brissot and I
contended that they did not know the regulations, and that the great
track half-way up which dominates the two courts was certainly within
bounds. Anyhow, taking advantage of the mist, I had before sunrise walked
as usual on the forbidden escarp. Then, having a slight cold, and feeling
poorly, I lay down upon a pile of palliasses in the Salle du Jeu de
Paume, and spent the day in re-reading _Eugénie Grandet_, which Corporal
Henriot had just received from Paris.
But I was thinking more about the baron’s departure than about old
Grandet. The others were playing chess. “What a fine chap he is!”
exclaimed Détry. “Riou, old boy, we ought to make him a grand speech when
he leaves. Did you see the farewell note he sent round the casemates? He
thanks his ‘fellow-workers.’ He courteously congratulates every one. He
wishes us good luck. There’s a man for you, one who has never failed to
treat us as men. Nothing of the Ploss about him!”
* * * * *
Lying with my head beneath the rug, my book closed, and my eyes shut, it
suddenly seemed to me that the recent weeks had been almost enjoyable.
I forgot the long nights of the first month or so, when my stomach was
continually gnawing, and when the memories of meals eaten before the war,
their steam, their odour, were so vivid as to constitute a veritable
torture of Tantalus. Forgetting home-sickness and tedium, I found myself
looking back wistfully to that which in actual experience had appeared
horrible.
It seemed to me that with the transfer of von Stengel a fresh
imprisonment was about to begin, harassing, with no security, and
inhuman; that henceforward I should be truly in prison.
An end, I said to myself, to our evening walks on the roads adjoining the
fort. An end to those pleasant saunters in the twilight, a little band
of five or six, almost as good as a tête-à-tête after the life of the
herd. Our new master, just married, will devote his leisure to his wife.
Possibly, moreover, as the baron has suggested, the recent escape of four
English officers from Fort Hartmann will make the new commandant very
strict.…
All at once it was borne in on me that the last few weeks had been at the
same time melancholy and pleasing.…
* * * * *
Farewell to my hop-garden, in which I had gleaned dried hops wherewith
to spice the insipid German tobacco. Farewell to my bushes of blackthorn
and barberry, where I plucked red berries, where I cut such fine
switches—_der Stock des Gelehrten_, as Stengel said. Farewell to my farm
at Hepperg, my great country seat which has fallen to the female line,
whose fortress-like walls, amid the straw stacks and the noisy populace
of ganders, geese, hens, and guinea-fowl, spoke to me of my birthplace
grieving for the two sons at the war, spoke to me of the country house
haloed in memories, dozing beneath the winter sun in the light shade of
the olives and the sad cypresses, blue-girdled by the shining hills of
Vivarais. Farewell to the disused quarry, the silent undergrowth, filled
with shafts of light and with gossamer; the carpet of dead leaves white
with hoar-frost, which crackles beneath the feet. Farewell to my royal
Danubian plain, where the setting sun throws into relief the huge and
gentle undulations, dotted with smoking villages. Farewell to my evening
skies, my grand Bavarian twilights, infinitely variable, which will
remain the most splendid memory of my imprisonment.
* * * * *
I was above all grateful to Baron von Stengel for having asked me to join
him in his afternoon walks with the French medical officers. As you know,
I have more taste for the beauties of nature than for the doings of my
kind. In thus presenting me with the freedom of the fields, my gaoler
gave me the thing I like best in the world, barring your company and that
of a few intimates.
He extended me this invitation one morning when I was in the throes
of despondency. It was late in September. At dawn there had been an
iridescent haze. On the escarp, great drops of water had formed on the
birch and willow branches, and were falling thence to the ground. The
weather was splendid; the sun was gradually dispersing the transparent
vapours; and yet one could imagine that all nature was weeping. I was
tired out. To secure oblivion, I had been working too assiduously for
several days. I was at the end of my resources; the sordidness of
the surroundings sickened me and hunger gnawed at my vitals. I was
unutterably miserable. I had no strength to do anything but to yearn
for you, to dream of flowers, of fresh springs, space, freedom. France!
France! Brissot, hoping to cure me, had brought me George Sand’s _Maîtres
sonneurs_, a greasy volume which had found its way here God knows how,
perhaps stolen from the municipal school by a soldier quartered in the
fort. Said Brissot: “It is redolent of nature; I am bringing you the
very bouquet of the French countryside!” Such was my condition when the
major came by. “Hallo, monsieur Riou,” he exclaimed, “you don’t look as
cheerful as usual.”—“I’m home-sick, mon commandant.”—“Would you care to
take a walk with me in the country this evening?”—“Should I care to!”
My memory of this first excursion is of a joy which was perfect though
uneventful. The great black gate with its heraldic lions was opened by
the sentry for the egress of the major and his companions; to the left
lay the avenue, the thicket of acacias masking the ditch of retreat;
below us, between the shivering, gold-capped birches, the gentle and
unending undulations of the plain; to the right, seen obliquely, the
yellow out-buildings, the tall hop-poles, the military road cut up by
artillery fire, running straight in the direction of the sombre crest of
the Franconian Jura, and crossing the huge chessboard of ploughed fields;
further on, the little strategic wood, a magnificent growth of fir-trees,
larches, and beeches, encircled by stone-pines and oaks, a sort of sacred
grove, with an undergrowth of the most varied nature.
I was walking in the rear of our little company, going quietly along,
avoiding conversation, filled with delight.
“Are you still sad, M. Riou?” said the baron.
“Oh, no, I am perfectly happy.”
The wide sky covering the wide landscape; the delicate lines of the
horizon; the purity of the light; the brilliancy of the September tints;
the fragrance of the fields; the herds of oxen; the ploughs at work,
guided by boys whistling melancholy airs—it was a Virgilian scene. Poor
wreckage from the battles of Lorraine that I was, this energy of nature,
of peaceful and robust nature, flooded my heart with great waves of mute
pleasure far more intense than the intoxication of the senses. After
the blood-stained fields of Dieuze, after the fetid prison-house, after
qualms, suffocation, base and monotonous wretchedness, it seemed to me
that I was coming back to life.
The wood was swarming with mushrooms. My companions, especially Lœbre,
were mycologists. They scattered among the undergrowth. “Here’s a real
nest of _tricholoma personatum_,” cried Bouvat in sonorous tones.
“Come and make sure, Lœbre.” Lœbre saunters up. The young man smiles
good-naturedly. “Pooh! that’s not the lilac stem! That’s _amanita
muscaria_. That’s no good to us. But you have overlooked those fine
_russulæ_ behind you on the roots of the pine-trees.” “Herr Lœbre, here’s
a prize!” called out M. Cavaillé, in Languedoc German. “Here are some
_lactarii deliciosi_; come and look, a regular fairy-ring of them.”
Their mouths watering, they all crowd round this epicure’s fare. “What
a feast we shall have this evening!” Now comes Jeandidier, of Longwy
in Lorraine, walking up with long, deliberate strides, carrying very
carefully, as a man carries a candle in a procession, beneath his fiery
beard and his long Bavarian pipe, two great parasol mushrooms, which of
all the mushrooms have the longest stems, have the most delicate flavour,
and are the most fragile. Bouvat bore away the spoils. Each one made his
contribution of _russula cyanoxantha_, _clitocybe_, meadow agaric, and
liver fungus. The baron was amused by these schoolboy antics. From time
to time a covey of partridges was put up, and flew noisily away; or a
hare, awakened with a start, fled in terror. Night was falling. We made
our way back, skirting the glacis. I culled a bouquet of autumn leaves.
We crossed a field from which the potatoes had just been lifted. A few of
the tubers had been overlooked. I put them in my pocket with great care,
under the baron’s very eyes. Bouquet, the head cook, made a fry of them
that evening. Eight of us enjoyed them.
This morning a deputation of the comrades came to me when I was at work,
to commission me to write a farewell address. It had to be very short,
since the baron could spare us but a few minutes. In pencil (ink is
forbidden) I quickly compose what is needed. I read it to the deputation,
which approves the wording. I give a hasty polish to my shoes, and we set
out for the _Kommandantur_. The baron shakes hands. We arrange ourselves
in a semicircle. I am at the right wing, close to the commandant. His
successor is there, a stiff-mannered little man, quite inscrutable. He
wears a yager’s cap, green in colour, pulled down to the ears; the collar
of his tunic stands up so as almost to hide his head, but we can see
his drooping features and cold eyes. While I am speaking he stands at
attention.
“Mon commandant, to every one of us your departure is a matter of
personal regret. You are an enemy, but never has any one had a more
courteous enemy.
“You have treated us as soldiers, with perfect frankness; we have treated
you as the true gentleman that you are.
“We, the French prisoners at Fort Orff, differ upon many points. But
there is one matter upon which, when we return to France, we shall all
agree, namely, that Commandant Major Baron von Stengel deserved and
gained the affection and admiration of those towards whom for three
months he had to fill the position of gaoler.
“Accept our thanks, mon commandant. God have you in his keeping.”
With moist eyes, M. von Stengel introduces us to his successor, each
one by name, detailing our qualities, our services, the incidents of
our career. Stiff as ever, the _Oberleutnant_ bows to each in turn, to
the infantry of the line, to the chasseurs à pied, to the chasseurs
alpins, to the artillery, to the engineers, to the hussars. They are
tall, handsome fellows, of the same type as the grand old von Stengel.
We can hardly believe that we are in Germany. We are sincerely affected,
quite free from self-consciousness. The baron speaks to us as friends.
At his age, when the events that one can look forward to are numbered,
everything seems of importance. This separation is painful to him.
None of us can fail to recognize it; there is no pretence about his
distress. He presses us by the hand. He tells me that he will have our
address translated, and that he is going to send on his carriage with
the luggage. “I want to take a last walk with my friends,” he said. “God
guard you, my fine fellows.”
The walk, just now, was a melancholy affair. To avoid the mud on the
road we strolled along the edge of the fields towards Hepperg, crowding
round the baron as round a dear friend who is taking leave for ever.
Great bands of red striated the dark sky. Smokelike vapours lowered over
the earth. Night came on, gloomy and solemn. The baron spoke to me of
Ingolstadt, whose massive steeples could be seen in the distance through
the mist rising from the Danube. He told me that apart from Germelsheim
in the Palatinate, this was the only fortress in Bavaria; that Tilly
and Wallenstein had lived there; that the little town of twenty thousand
inhabitants had been a capital in its day. When we reached the gate, he
said with a smile, “I count my friends’ heads; all of them are here.” We
shook hands lingeringly and in silence at the door of the _Kommandantur_.
Farewell now to the fields; farewell, even, to the footpath of the
escarp. I have been warned that I shall be fired on if I am seen there.
I must be content henceforward with the muddy track overlooking the poor
amphitheatre of the courts, filthier than a pigsty. I still have your
little acacias, leafless, lugubrious, shivering in the bitter wind.
DISAPPOINTMENT
_December 17, 1914._
Our new gaoler has introduced a fresh method of taking the roll-call. We
have all to line up in two ranks in the sticky mud of the ditches, and to
wait there while we are counted. This ridiculous enumeration interferes
with the digestion of our poor midday meal, and serves more than any
other petty formality to remind us that we are prisoners. Just now, when
the gloomy ceremony was finished, I went to see the _Feldwebel_.
He is a wealthy horse-dealer from Ratisbon, cunning, short, with a
receding forehead, fresh-coloured, laughing eyes, well padded with
fat, a typical German Jew. Recently emerged from poverty, moderately
patriotic, secretly thinking that people are very stupid to get their
skins perforated for the _Vaterland_ and other fine words, he takes for
his own motto in all circumstances that a living dog is better than a
dead lion. He has managed to arrange that his part in the campaign shall
be a safe one, played where he will be close to his faithful spouse and
to his business, far from the deadly bullets. He is quite a good fellow,
with no desire to play the persecutor; but since his chief dread is to
be caught in a dereliction of duty and sent to the front, he is extremely
strict. Twice a day, at two and at seven, we exchange language lessons.
This does not merely secure me some new words of German, but also from
time to time I am given a handful of nuts and two or three apples.
I hasten off to fetch my parcel. I imagine that it contains something
to eat—chocolate, sausage—and I am hungry. The _Feldwebel_ giggles like
a child. He takes the key of No. 72, the terrible casemate which is as
damp as a drain; and, flanked by d’Arnoult and myself, he reaches the
“parcels office” at the end of the gloomy passage. I walk confidently,
for I have already, by clandestine methods, scrutinized your consignment,
and weighed it in my hand. It was compact, as heavy as one could wish,
and felt like a ten-pound box of Menier chocolate. I was cocksure. Here
we are; we light the lantern. I lay the packet on the table. Keenly
expectant, I cut open the oilcloth wrapping. Books! Montaigne, Voltaire.
An indulgent glance from the _Feldwebel_ at this consignment. I take
my leave. Brissot awaits me at the turn of the stairs. “Well?”—“Books,
old chap.”—“Capital! The smallest grain of millet would have suited you
better!”
Not even a letter, a little smuggled letter! How punctilious you are!
Do you know that your letter of November 2nd did not come to hand till
yesterday, having taken forty-four days to travel from Paris to Fort
Orff?
OH, DEAR!
_February 26, 1915._
The first warm, sunny day. The grey grass of last autumn is showing in
patches here and there through the melting snow; it is slightly tinged
with green. The sky is blue. A huge cloud, white and shining, rolls
towards the north.
Why do I feel so lightsome this morning? Is it possible that I am once
more what I was before the war?
If only the end were nearing, the end of the long miseries of winter in
the lousy, stinking, and chattering casemate! If an end were nearing to
the sterile cackle, the disquisitions on strategy, the disputes, and the
lamentations, to all that a discontented crowd exhales, through the empty
hours, in the way of physical boredom and of melancholy! Oh the gnawing
ache of these two months in an ant-hill encompassed by snow, filth, and
bitter winds! Two months of purgatory. I know now that to live among men,
nothing but men, day by day and night by night, in intimate contact,
without activity, without solitude, without the company of women (that
other solitude), is to live in purgatory.